2024 Is the New 1984: Big Brother and the Rise of the Security Industrial Complex

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By John & Nisha Whitehead

Source: The Rutherford Institute

“Big Brother is Watching You.”―George Orwell, 1984

2024 is the new 1984.

Forty years past the time that George Orwell envisioned the stomping boot of Big Brother, the police state is about to pass off the baton to the surveillance state.

Fueled by a melding of government and corporate power—the rise of the security industrial complex—this watershed moment sounds a death knell for our privacy rights.

An unofficial fourth branch of government, the Surveillance State came into being without any electoral mandate or constitutional referendum, and yet it possesses superpowers, above and beyond those of any other government agency save the military.

It operates beyond the reach of the president, Congress and the courts, and it marches in lockstep with the corporate elite who really call the shots in Washington, DC.

This is the new face of tyranny in America: all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful.

Tread cautiously.

Empowered by advances in surveillance technology and emboldened by rapidly expanding public-private partnerships between law enforcement, the Intelligence Community, and the private sector, the Surveillance State is making the fictional world of 1984, Orwell’s dystopian nightmare, our looming reality.

1984 portrays a global society of total control in which people are not allowed to have thoughts that in any way disagree with the corporate state. There is no personal freedom, and advanced technology has become the driving force behind a surveillance-driven society. Snitches and cameras are everywhere. People are subject to the Thought Police, who deal with anyone guilty of thought crimes. The government, or “Party,” is headed by Big Brother who appears on posters everywhere with the words: “Big Brother is watching you.”

Indeed, in our present age of ubiquitous surveillance, there are no private lives.

Everything is increasingly public.

What we are witnessing, in the so-called name of security and efficiency, is the creation of a new class system comprised of the watched (average Americans such as you and me) and the watchers (government bureaucrats, technicians and private corporations).

We now find ourselves in the unenviable position of being monitored, managed and controlled by our technology, which answers not to us but to our government and corporate rulers.

This is the fact-is-stranger-than-fiction lesson that is being pounded into us on a daily basis.

In this way, 1984, which depicted the ominous rise of ubiquitous technology, fascism and totalitarianism, has become an operation manual for the omnipresent, modern-day surveillance state.

There are roughly one billion surveillance cameras worldwide and that number continues to grow, thanks to their wholehearted adoption by governments (especially law enforcement and military agencies), businesses, and individual consumers.

Surveillance cameras mounted on utility poles, traffic lights, businesses, and homes. Ring doorbells. GPS devices. Dash cameras. Drones. Store security cameras. Geofencing and geotracking. FitBits. Alexa. Internet-connected devices. 

Stingray devices, facial recognition technology, body cameras, automated license plate readers, gunshot detection, predictive policing software, AI-enhanced video analytics, real-time crime centers, fusion centers: all of these technologies and surveillance programs rely on public-private partnerships that together create a sticky spiderweb from which there is no escape.

With every new surveillance device we welcome into our lives, the government gains yet another toehold into our private worlds.

As the cost of these technologies becomes more affordable for the average consumer, an effort underwritten by the tech industry and encouraged by law enforcement agencies and local governing boards, which in turn benefit from access to surveillance they don’t need to include in their budgets, big cities, small towns, urban, suburban and rural communities alike are adding themselves to the surveillance state’s interconnected grid.

What this adds up to for government agencies (that is, FBI, NSA, DHS agents, etc., as well as local police) is a surveillance map that allows them to track someone’s movements over time and space, hopscotching from doorbell camera feeds and business security cameras to public cameras on utility poles, license plate readers, traffic cameras, drones, etc.

It has all but eliminated the notion of privacy enshrined in the  Fourth Amendment and radically re-drawn the line of demarcation between our public and private selves.

The police state has become particularly adept at sidestepping the Fourth Amendment, empowered by advances in surveillance technology and emboldened by rapidly expanding public-private partnerships between law enforcement, the Intelligence Community, and the private sector.

Over the past 50-plus years, surveillance has brought about a series of revolutions in how governments govern and populations are policed to the detriment of us all. Cybersecurity expert Adam Scott Wandt has identified three such revolutions.

The first surveillance revolution came about as a result of government video cameras being installed in public areas. There were a reported 51 million surveillance cameras blanketing the United States in 2022. It’s estimated that Americans are caught on camera an average of 238 times every week (160 times per week while driving; 40 times per week at work; 24 times per week while out running errands and shopping; and 14 times per week through various other channels and activities). That doesn’t even touch on the coverage by surveillance drones, which remain a relatively covert part of police spying operations.

The second revolution occurred when law enforcement agencies started forging public-private partnerships with commercial establishments like banks and drug stores and parking lots in order to gain access to their live surveillance feeds. The use of automatic license plate readers (manufactured and distributed by the likes of Flock Safety), once deployed exclusively by police and now spreading to home owners associations and gated communities, extends the reach of the surveillance state that much further afield. It’s a win-win for police budgets and local legislatures when they can persuade businesses and residential communities to shoulder the costs of the equipment and share the footage, and they can conscript the citizenry to spy on each other through crowdsourced surveillance.

The third revolution was ushered in with the growing popularity of doorbell cameras such as Ring, Amazon’s video surveillance doorbell, and Google’s Nest Cam.

Amazon has been particularly aggressive in its pursuit of a relationship with police, enlisting them in its marketing efforts, and going so far as to hosting parties for police, providing free Ring doorbells and deep discounts, sharing “active camera” maps of Ring owners, allowing access to the Law Enforcement Neighborhood Portal, which enables police to directly contact owners for access to their footage, and coaching police on how to obtain footage without a warrant.

Ring currently partners with upwards of 2,161 law enforcement agencies and 455 fire departments, and that number grows exponentially every year. As Vice reports, “Ring has also heavily pursued city discount programs and private alliances with neighborhood watch groups. When cities provide free or discounted Ring cameras, they sometimes create camera registries, and police sometimes order people to aim Ring cameras at their neighbors, or only give cameras to people surveilled by neighborhood watches.”

In November 2022, San Francisco police gained access to the live footage of privately owned internet cameras as opposed to merely being able to access recorded footage. No longer do police even have to request permission of homeowners for such access: increasingly, corporations have given police access to footage as part of their so-called criminal investigations with or without court orders.

The fourth revolutionary shift may well be the use of facial recognition software and artificial intelligence-powered programs that can track people by their biometrics, clothing, behavior and car, thereby synthesizing the many strands of surveillance video footage into one cohesive narrative, which privacy advocates refer to as 360 degree surveillance.

While the guarantee of safety afforded by these surveillance nerve centers remains dubious, at best, there is no disguising their contribution in effecting a sea change towards outright authoritarianism.

For instance, as an in-depth investigative report by the Associated Press concludes, the very same mass surveillance technologies that were supposedly so necessary to fight the spread of COVID-19 are now being used to stifle dissent, persecute activists, harass marginalized communities, and link people’s health information to other surveillance and law enforcement tools.

As the AP reports, federal officials have also been looking into how to add “‘identifiable patient data,’ such as mental health, substance use and behavioral health information from group homes, shelters, jails, detox facilities and schools,” to its surveillance toolkit.

These cameras—and the public-private eyes peering at us through them—are re-engineering a society structured around the aesthetic of fear and, in the process, empowering “people to not just watch their neighborhood, but to organize as watchers,” creating not just digital neighborhood watches but digital gated communities.

Finally, there is a repressive, suppressive effect to surveillance that not only acts as a potentially small deterrent on crime but serves to monitor and chill lawful First Amendment activity.

As Matthew Feeney warns in the New York Times, “In the past, Communists, civil rights leaders, feminists, Quakers, folk singers, war protesters and others have been on the receiving end of law enforcement surveillance. No one knows who the next target will be.”

No one knows, but it’s a pretty good bet that the surveillance state will be keeping a close watch on anyone seen as a threat to the government’s chokehold on power.

After all, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the Surveillance State never sleeps.

Navigating The Space Between Worlds

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Mastering the art of being in the world, even when we know it’s filled with heavy challenges and chaos.

By Joe Martino

Source: The Pulse

Over the last few decades, many have written about our time as a space where humanity is between worlds. On one hand, we have our current way of life which is incredibly demanding on our minds and bodies, is rather toxic, and filled with conflict and destruction. On the other hand is a vision for a world that’s slower, more connected, more natural, and more loving.

As we navigate what appears to be the dying stages of the old paradigm, the intensity of what it is seems to increase. The qualities of the old system become louder, acting as an evolutionary pressure to push things along.

Many become inspired to explore ways to bring the ‘new world’ to the here and now via their actions.

How do I live without money?
How do I exit the toxicity of our current system?
How do I not participate anymore?

If we aren’t careful, these questions can create a framing of our current world that can make it very hard to live within.

If we deeply judge the need to work, to make money, to pay taxes etc, all of it can become a heavy thing to carry. We end up waking up every day dreading going to work, and having endless conversations, thoughts and emotions about how the bad guys are ruining life for us and we’re the victims in it all.

While there may be truth to some of the observations about our society, the framing of it in our minds is disempowering many of us, and it’s making our current moment dreadful. Further, it holds us back from living and being able to solve the problem.

So how do we work with this? How do we live in the space between worlds?

What Feels Natural To Us?

Indeed, our current societal design is not supportive of human beings thriving. In that sense, it has been poorly designed. We have such an easy time as a species doing this because our higher-order thinking allows us to override what is good for our biology. Simply put: it’s easy to ignore our needs using our thinking, especially when we become so identified with life cognitively.

I have 7 alpacas. The moment they need to poop, they just do it, no thinking, no “I’ll just finish this paragraph,” they just do it. They listen to their biology. Humans on the other hand don’t always listen. In some cases we don’t because we have social structures, social norms, and brains to hold this all together. But we also don’t because we’ve learned to ignore our body, feelings, and emotions in many ways.

While our higher-order thinking is beautiful in one sense, how do we know when it begins to work against us?

I often use an example with friends and clients of a bear. The bear (a mammal like us) was likely raised by an attached parent. It learned how to ‘bear’ and how to be in its environment from that parent in its natural environment. If that bear’s ecosystem was cut down or destroyed by humans, it wouldn’t stay for too long. It would know that concrete, a lack of forest, and a lack of fresh water aren’t good for it, and it would leave to find a suitable home. The bear is simply following its connection to its biology.

We as humans know we are doing this to animals and call it ‘displacing nature/animals.’ Interestingly, we tend to see ourselves ‘outside’ of nature, conveniently ignoring how we’re ‘displacing’ ourselves.

As mentioned, humans are resilient in that we can survive in different environments. We find ways to adjust, cope, and problem solve within environments that are not natural to us. Here I’m not just talking about physical environments but also emotional ones. We find ways to survive in abusive situations for example. We know we should leave, but sometimes we feel we can’t or don’t have the capacity to.

Further, there are difficult elements to our environments like not having access to clean food, clean water, and shelter without having to work very hard to get them.

Because of our amazing thinking brains, humans can do and create incredible things, but we can also become so cognitively and mentally identified that we override our basic biology so much so that we build systems that aren’t attuned to our own well-being.

Thus, humans are currently surviving, but we are in no way thriving. And we did this to ourselves via a disconnection from ourselves.

To be clear, it’s not that we shouldn’t have roads, technology, and societal systems, it’s that they should be designed with human and natural thrivability in mind. Instead, our world is designed with economic thrivability and elite power structures in mind. All at the expense of human wellness.

The tricky part is, that the more people see and experience this truth, the more we can become angered and upset by it. This is fair. A boundary feels crossed because we living now aren’t necessarily the ones who built it or are choosing it. “Why am I subjected to a system I don’t like nor support, yet feel like I can’t escape it?”

As I stated in my essay If No One Wants This, Why Are We Doing It? our way of life doesn’t feel natural to us deep down and it’s overwhelming the challenge is we can’t change it overnight. So what do we do to live within it without driving ourselves mad?

Exploring The Art of Existing Between Worlds

Over the last 15 years exploring alternative thinking and spiritual spaces, I have discovered that it’s common for people to want to fully “exit” the system. They don’t want to integrate, use money, or do anything within the system as they feel it’s “toxic.”

As mentioned, these feelings are somewhat valid, but how we choose to navigate them is everything. Here are a few key observations.

1. Having unprocessed anger, resentment, victimhood and judgment for the system is a recipe for disaster.

If we go to work each day, pay taxes, or drive on highways with the mindset and emotional drive that we are victims and stuck, we will certainly make our lives feel more challenging. Our mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual framing at that point is that of contraction and stuckness. And it’s often built on a nervous system foundation of survival.

Everything will feel much more difficult in this state. Now, this doesn’t mean we can’t observe the state of the world, understand it, and explore how to change it, all of that can be done without getting stuck in mental and emotional traps. But we have to be careful about the general state of mind and being we are taking into our daily lives. Without being aware of this, we give all of our power away to the system and allow it to dictate how we feel.

I’ve watched people panic and freak out about not eating organic apples, yet their mindset and relationship with themselves and the world is creating more toxicity in themselves than a non-organic apple.

When this mindset goes unchecked, our locus of control for our own well-being is outside of us, not inside. (Key note, I’m not suggesting that the system doesn’t have toxic effects on us, I’m saying that there is a space where we can exist within the system with greater wellness.)

Can we begin to see work, life, and what we currently have going as an opportunity? Can we change the lens through which we see it so it doesn’t add to greater dis-ease? Can we support ourselves, our nervous system, and our emotional well-being through practice that helps us build capacity and resilience?

2. Trying to exit completely is incredibly hard, and most end up just as unhappy.

I have found a lot of people trying everything in their power to avoid working and making money. Here I’m not referring to people who are not well or injured and can’t work, I’m talking about folks who can yet have such a degree of judgment toward the system that they avoid being within it.

Often this path leaves people stuck, uninspired, unable to experience much of the world, and unable to even afford fun projects at home. Life begins to become small, and these people rarely seem truly happy.

That said, intentional communities are an interesting path for some. Although they work and exist within the system in more ways than people think. Sure, a few places are fully off grid, but for the most part money, utilities, land purchases, property tax etc, are all part of the mix.

If you don’t have a lot of money, this path is very tough. People can of course move to countries where things are very cheap and start over, but even that is tough for most people as it’s still expensive and work still needs to be found to live well into the future.

1. Exploring capacity and resilience building to exist in our current world and help solve problems within it seems a fruitful path. This includes doing small things within the system to make life more natural.

To me, this is a path that is accessible to most people and provides a meaningful balance of making a difference and enjoying life. I may also be biased toward this as this is the path I’ve chosen and have taught throughout my work since 2009.

For example, I chose to start a company and embrace the world as it was in 2009. I built my business on a foundation of creating an amazing work environment for employees to work, rest, grow, and contribute to a ‘collective evolution.’ Over time, I was able to give back by hiring 14 people to come into this environment of serving something greater than our personal ambitions, yet those were taken care of too.

We did some amazing projects around the world with excess funds, and we helped establish an internet culture of wellness, consciousness and conscious media. If I had kept the system at a distance, those benefits would not have been shared.

Humans have lived for such a long time in unnatural ways, disconnected from ourselves, and not processing our emotions and traumas, our nervous systems hold that history. It is further being re-inforced by the reality that yes, there is toxicity still in our world. It is badly designed.

But still, regulation and capacity at a deep cellular level need to be restored for most of us. We need to clear out the messy stuff. Otherwise, we will take our pains into any revolutionary systems that pops up outside the system anyway. We see this a lot with intentional communities that collapse.

This means focusing on deeply restoring physiological safety, wellbeing, emotional fluidity and regulation is foundational to living well, and it can be done even in the existing system. Even though our system is tough, this path gives us much more energy, resilience and capacity to exist within the system and make as big a difference as possible while enjoying life.

This path is work. It acknowledged that it isn’t easy to feel great in our world due to the poor design, but that it’s still within our capacity if we focus on it.

This doesn’t mean we ignore the need to change or adjust our system. But this path gives us the greatest ability to do so as we will have built the capacity and deep empowerment to actually do it, vs. being feeling stuck, tired and victimized resisting the system so heavily.

Existing in a space between worlds means building individual and collective wellbeing, and creating change along the way. The more resilient we are, the more we can make money and use it as a tool to find ways to make our lives better, less reliant on the system, and healthier.

In that space of wellness, we can have meaningful conversations and learn to hold visions of a future world that isn’t built on hating and resenting the old. If I’m honest, almost all of the successful changes and projects I’ve seen out there have come from this space of being.

In summary, taking stock of whether our observations of the world have become deep disempowering judgements is a worthwhile reflection. Being ‘awake to corruption’ doesn’t have to come with lifelong resentment toward the system, where we comment online about ‘the bad guys’ ruining things for everyone. Or that somehow Biden, Trump, Trudeau etc. are the root of the problems. I hate to say it but, this gets us nowhere.

Questioning whether we are truly living our lives in a way that promotes emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being and expansiveness is important. Without this, our foundation is weak.

The path forward I’m suggesting is one of building enough strength, well-being, and energy to live with wellness in our current system, so we have energy left over to see clearly and act upon changing what is not natural to us. Good sensemaking of our current events goes alongside this, but as you’ll note from my previous work, good sensemaking is built on a healthy nervous system.

Saturday Matinee: Sanjuro

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By Brian Eggert

Source: Deep Focus Review

Answering for the violent thrills of Yojimbo, Akira Kurosawa’s sequel Sanjuro modifies its predecessor’s structure and, in a way, condemns its eponymous hero, reprised by Toshiro Mifune, by depicting his violent existence as a tarnished bushido ideal. Instead of sending up the swordfighting chambara genre as Mifune’s Sanjuro mows down gangs of grotesque, bumbling yakuza criminals, against which he appears superior and even righteous, Kurosawa places his unkempt ronin in the middle of a jidai-geki, a dramatic period piece wherein Mifune’s protagonist remains crafty and skilled in combat, but, shamefully, without nobility nor willingness to restrain his violent instincts. Redefined through introspection and eventual feelings of disgrace about his lifestyle, Kurosawa’s Sanjuro becomes a tragic figure, his mythic stature marked—or soaked, rather—by the blood of his undisciplined existence.

Along with Ryuzo Kikushima and Hideo Oguni, Kurosawa developed Sanjuro from the Shugoro Yamamoto novel Hibi Heian (A Break in the Tranquility) prior to shooting Yojimbo. Yamamoto’s tale, although similarly plotted in its broadstrokes to Kurosawa’s eventual adaptation, features a samurai protagonist without as much idiosyncrasy or skill as Sanjuro. Author of the source novels for Kurosawa’s upcoming pictures Red Beard and Dodes’ka-den, Yamamoto would be associated with Kurosawa for the rest of their careers. For this picture, Kurosawa intended for Hiromichi Horikawa to direct. Horikawa was a former assistant director for Kurosawa on Seven Samurai and Throne of Blood among others, and had become a thriving director in the mid-1950s, with many chambara films among his releases. Nevertheless, producers at Toho Company insisted that Kurosawa direct, given the popularity of Yojimbo under his headship.

Shooting began on Yojimbo in January 1961 and was completed on April 16, and because Kurosawa edited during production, the film was released four days later on April 20, 1961. And since Sanjuro required only minor rewriting to convert the earlier draft into a sequel to Yojimbo, production commenced on September 25, 1961, and ended December 20, with the finished film premiering January 1, 1962. The speed and artistic showmanship with which these films were shot, edited, and released is staggering, especially taking into consideration the detail Kurosawa integrates into his picture. The main setting—a chamberlain’s house and the pond in front, a separating wall with a compound on one side and the sanctuary house on the other—were built as open sets on Toho’s largest stage. Kurosawa oversaw every detail personally, from the vast layout down to the crucial look of camellias on the trees, which the director insisted be hand-made to make sure each one looked just right. At his prime, Kurosawa’s meticulous, even autocratic control over his productions fully justified his nickname: The Emperor.

Sanjuro opens with nine young, incompetent samurai assembled in secret at a forest shrine. Their leader, Iori Izaka (Yuzo Kayama), has recently met with his uncle, the chamberlain, with whom Izaka lobbied to permit his fellow samurai to investigate signs of corruption. The chamberlain refused, which suggested to Izaka that the chamberlain was behind the corruption. And so, Izaka turned to the superintendent for advice; the superintendent agreed to help if they all meet at the present forest shrine. All at once, Mifune’s Sanjuro yawns from the darkness, and casually steps out to offer his thoughts—that the superintendent is, in fact, the corrupt one and the chamberlain was merely being protective of his nephew. He even suspects the superintendent’s men will double-cross the young samurai at their planned meeting, which, as it turns out, takes place at the forest shrine. When Sanjuro learns this, he looks outside and confirms his suspicions are true, then hides the nine young samurai in the floorboards. The superintendent’s men call for surrender and Sanjuro emerges, shouting about the noise and knocking several soldiers down. Believing Sanjuro’s deception, the soldiers’ leader, the idealized samurai warrior Muroto (Tatsuya Nakadai, who also played the gunslinger in Yojimbo), so bound to bushido, recognizes Sanjuro’s skill and offers him a job if he wants it.

Mifune’s introduction recalls the one from Yojimbo, where the ronin is asked his name, and in response, he reveals his first name, “Sanjuro [meaning thirty years old]… going on forty.” He then scans the area and settles on some nearby plantlife for his family name. In Yojimbo, he sees a mulberry field and responds “Kuwabatake [mulberry field],” and in Sanjuro he replies “Tsubaki [camellia]”—an ironic yet apt choice given the camellia’s associations to the chamberlain’s wife and daughter later in the film. In this sequel, Mifune’s Sanjuro proves just as iconic as his performance in the preceding film, only streamlined to highlight those memorable character traits. Unless his sword is drawn, the actor’s arms rarely leave his kimono except to scratch his chin or to itch at his scalp; along with his character’s minimum of dialogue, this places our focus on Mifune’s expressions, ripe with seemingly stoic confidence interrupted by his anger and unease. Sanjuro’s disdain around the hopeless young samurai and his later discomfort around the chamberlain’s wife and daughter are always comical, making Mifune’s performance a subtly complex combination of characterized gestures and reserved emotions.

After the superintendent’s men depart the forest shrine, Sanjuro and the young samurai realize the chamberlain will probably be arrested or worse, as the superintendent has no doubt deduced that the chamberlain suspects him. They resolve to rescue the chamberlain’s wife and daughter (Takako Irie and Reiko Dan) first, before they too are taken. Contemptuous of the young samurai but impelled to assist (for some cash and food) because, as he tells them, they cannot take care of themselves, Sanjuro leads them to the chamberlain’s house, which is guarded by the superintendent’s men. Despite Sanjuro’s constant insults and berating tone, the young samurai follow his every word “like a centipede” astonished by his skill. And, after convincing a servant to get the guards drunk, they quietly take out the sentries and move the women into a nearby barn. Here, Kurosawa pauses for a scene to establish Sanjuro’s lasting themes by differentiating the film’s protagonist from everyone else onscreen. The young samurai, the mannerly women, the dignified warriors serving an upper class—they each follow a particular decorum against which Sanjuro seems incongruous.

When the women first enter their own barn turned hideout, it is a place they have never been; they remark about the lovely smell of hay, the dreamlike quality one feels when resting back on a large mound of the stuff, and reveal their sophisticated obliviousness to the danger of the situation. Their ability to see so much good in the world amid all the bloodshed and unruly politics is not meant to make them look ignorant; rather, they are elevated beyond such unnecessary concerns, achieving a level of paradoxical nescient enlightenment. The chamberlain’s wife asks with polite interest about Sanjuro, and Izaka explains he is a friend. “I hesitate to say this after you so kindly saved us,” remarks the wife, “but killing people is a bad habit. You glisten too brightly… Like a drawn sword… You’re like a sword without a sheath. You cut well, but the best sword is kept in its sheath.” Sanjuro reacts uneasily to this, knowing the wife’s assessment is accurate, but perhaps unwilling to admit it to himself, yet. Sanjuro begins to feel ashamed of his status in the presence of the refined sensibilities of these women. With this, Kurosawa deepens the character throughout the course of the film, allowing Sanjuro to learn something about himself, his eventual victory bittersweet.

One of the young samurai suggests hiding in his house and Sanjuro agrees, but their group quickly learns that the superintendent is keeping the chamberlain locked up next door, just over a compound wall. By the end, Sanjuro, who deceives his enemies by taking Muroto’s job offer to learn of the chamberlain’s exact location, calls the young samurai to rescue the chamberlain, using a downpour of camellias floating down a stream under the compound’s wall as an elegant signal to attack. With this, bloody violence begins to unfold, while on the other side of the wall, the chamberlain’s wife and daughter clap with enchantment at the beauty of the flowers on the water, a scene played both for humor and to emphasize the nonsensicality of violence against the simpler things in life—a message Sanjuro learns by the conclusion. With the chamberlain rescued, the young samurai realize Sanjuro has gone. They find him in a field, preparing to face off against the distinguished samurai Muroto, who, his honor shamed with Sanjuro’s deception, insists they duel. Sanjuro cuts down his opponent with incredible speed, and all of the young samurai, shocked, watch with enthusiasm. After a moment of silent awe, one of them declares the display “brilliant”.

The duel itself remains Sanjuro’s most memorable scene, not only because it concludes the film, but because it does so with such an unforgettable “bang”. Positioned face-to-face, Mifune and Nakadai, mirroring their final scene together in Yojimbo, standoff for a clocked 26 seconds of silence, an excruciatingly long period of suspense. The technician who controlled the pressurized pump to spray Muroto’s fake blood (a batch of chocolate syrup and carbonated water) from Nakadai’s torso worried that the effect would not please Kurosawa, and overcompensated by adding thirty pounds of pressure, so when the scene commenced filming and Mifune cuts with split-second speed, fake blood shot out like a geyser. The larger-than-life outcome, wholly staggering and uncharacteristic when compared to the violence in the rest of the film, pleased Kurosawa, as its exaggerated quality echoes the base thrill both the young samurai and the audience feel toward the spectacle, and how even for a violent film this last act of violence remains the ugliest and most horrible.

A moment later, Sanjuro, enraged by their response, scorns the young samurai for applauding such violence. “Idiots! What do you know about anything? …He was just like me. A drawn sword that wouldn’t stay in its sheath. But you know, the lady was right. The best sword is kept in its sheath. You’d better stay in yours.” Sanjuro begins to walk away and the young samurai follow. “Stop following me or I’ll kill you!” They pause, drop to their knees in honor of their master, confused and shamed by their own ignorance. Scratching, Sanjuro says curtly, “Abayo” or “Bye” and walks off, as composer Masaru Sato’s theme from Yojimbo sends the disillusioned hero on his way. Forced to cut down his opponent, Sanjuro has learned enough about himself to see a level of self-destruction in killing Muroto. Whereas Sanjuro walks away from Yojimbo unaffected by the violence he has caused, he is not so untouched by the end of this sequel.

With Sanjuro a deeper, more thoughtful hero than he was in Yojimbo, this conclusion does not come as a victory. Despite his attempts to instruct them, Sanjuro’s young students have learned nothing of honor, only the thrill of battle. They remain adolescents, swept up in the illusions of the typical jidai-geki, with all of its heroics and courtly politics and romanticized sword fights, and find themselves taken by the rapidly unfolding progression of the plot. Meanwhile, Sanjuro finds the true meaning of bushido by the end, ironically from the words of an inexperienced, naïve but ultimately astute woman whose ideals are shaped by the strictest of Japanese formality. Whereas the young samurai are clinging to their chambara-inspired tales of swordplay and violence, Sanjuro realizes he supplied their myth and feels guilty for his crimes, but in the end reaches a greater plane of wisdom, one aspiring to be more like the strict master swordsman from Seven Samurai.

Among Kurosawa’s most well-balanced films, Sanjuro resounds with equal parts artistic intent and sheer entertainment value—the quality of Kurosawa’s greatest works. An argument can be made that the sequel betters its predecessor by adding a human dimension to the mythological anti-hero from Yojimbo, who, instead of descending upon a small village like a god to unleash retribution, is brought down to earth by humbling comments from the chamberlain’s wife. An undefeatable presence between two pathetic yakuza gangs, Sanjuro stands out as a disheveled bum amid the white-collar setting of a jidai-geki, and because of this, he feels shame. Kurosawa redefines the character in his sequel, complicates his mythology, and avoids that typical sequel mistake of giving audiences more of a proven formula. An audience might walk away from Yojimbo and overlook the social implications, mistaking the picture for escapist entertainment void of commentary; but after Sanjuro, no one can deny the powerful message Kurosawa imparts.

Bibliography:

Galbraith IV, Stuart. The Emperor and the Wolf: The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune. New York: Faber and Faber, 2002.

Kurosawa, Akira. Something Like An Autobiography. New York : Knopf: distributed by Random House, 1982.

Richie, Donald. The Films of Akira Kurosawa, Third Edition, Expanded and Updated. With additional material by Joan Mellen. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1996.

Richie, Donald; Schrader, Paul. A Hundred Years of Japanese Film: A Concise History, with a Selective Guide to DVDs and Videos. Tokyo; New York: Kodansha International: Distributed in the U.S. by Kodansha America, 2005.

How Sad It It Is to Watch America’s Abandonment of Morality and Degeneration into Evil.

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By Paul Craig Roberts

Source: PaulCraigRoberts.org

To be an American today is to collect a basket full of sadness.  We have been at war forever for the profits of the military/security complex, for the hegemonic ideology of the neoconservatives, for Cold War hysteria, and for Israel.  Huge sums of money have been wasted for no benefit to the American people.  Just yesterday I was listening to a deputy sheriff tell me how frustrating it was that he cannot reach the criminal American elite and bring them home to their crimes, but has, instead, to focus on the minor crimes of their lower class victims.  

I asked him why it is the lower class that most waves the flag, and he said that patriotism is all that they have that gives them meaning.  I responded that this means that they cannot escape their victimhood, and he said “that is what is sad about it.”

Parents have not come home from Washington’s wars to their spouses, children, family, and friends.  They died for the military/security complex’s profits, for Israel, or for some dumbshit ideology.  They did not die for America, but for their deaths to have meaning, their families have to insist that they did.  With the American people trapped in this way, Washington can pile up the deaths, thanking the dead not for defending the military/security complex’s profits, but for “defending America.” In this way Washington can continue its endless wars. Dying for America is a way the lower class can find meaning in their lives. 

Now that Russia has shown that there is to be no American victory in Ukraine, Washington has renewed its war adventures in the Middle East, aligning solidly with Israel’s massacre of the Palestinians and against the Arab and Muslim countries that oppose what is an Israeli genocide of the Palestinians. Palestinian women, children, hospitals, schools, social infrastructure are being blown to tiny pieces with the American bombs and missiles that Biden is handing to Israel’s Nazi leader, Netanyahu, who is under indictment both in Israel and now in effect by the International Court of Justice.  But this means nothing to Washington, which sees itself as the exceptional, indispensable country unaccountable to any law, domestic or international.

The alleged “moral democracies,” the US, UK, EU, Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Iceland, thumbed their noses at the International Court of Justice’s verdict against Israel by suspending their funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the major source of aid to the Palestinians in Gaza.  

What does this tell us about the morality of the Western World.  It tells us that it is worse than in Sodom and Gomorrah. 

How can we be Proud Americans when the suspension of funding by Washington will impact life-saving assistance for over two million civilians, over half of whom are children, who rely on UNRWA aid in Gaza? The population faces starvation and an outbreak of disease under Israel’s bombardment and blockade of aid.

This is the way that Zionist Israel, together with its Biden Regime Democrat ally, intends to accomplish its genocidal elimination of the Palestinian people. 

Israel has blockaded all water, food, electricity, and medical supplies to Gaza for the last 120 days. As a result, a half million Palestinians face starvation. 

The massive and ongoing bombing of Gaza, courtesy of the continuous shipment of US munitions to Israel, has killed and wounded at least 90,000 Palestinians, 70% of them women and children. More than 1000 children have had to undergo amputations without anesthesia. There is no medicine, no blood for transfusions, no clean water to wash wounds. And no food. Only more bombs falling from the sky each day, thanks to America.

Chris Hedges reports that the West’s alleged humanitarian and medical institutions refuse to denounce Israel’s decimation of human life in Gaza.  We are faced with the stark fact that even Western medical and humanitarian institutions are in the pocket of Israeli Zionists.  Morality cannot be found on the scene.

How is it that a tiny county, the existence of which depends entirely on American support, can force the world to accept genocide at the risk of the war widening into Nuclear Armageddon?

Stupid Macho U.S. Electioneering Will Push Biden Into Doomed War

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By Finian Cunningham

Source: Strategic Culture Foundation

Predictably, Joe Biden is being flayed by the Republicans over the killing of three U.S. troops in Jordan by Iraqi militants.

The Democrat president is slammed for being weak and a coward by his political opponents.

Donald Trump, his main Republican rival, mocked Biden as a “loser” and said the attacks on U.S. troops were because of the president’s “weakness and surrender”.

Nikki Haley, the other Republican vying for the presidential election this year, also taunted Biden for showing spinelessness toward Iran. She called for direct retaliation on the Islamic Republic “with the full force of American strength”. Logically, that could imply the use of nuclear weapons.

Unanimously across the mainstream U.S. political spectrum, it was assumed that Iran was ultimately responsible for the deadly attack on the U.S. military base on Sunday in Jordan where three military servicemen were killed and 34 were reportedly wounded, according to early reports.

The attack was claimed by Iraqi militants, the Kata’ib Hezbollah, as part of an umbrella group known as the Islamic Resistance. The militants are believed to be an alliance of militias based in Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, and Yemen. The latter two include Hezbollah and the Ansar Allah movement also known as the Houthis. All are allied with Iran. But each is understood to have its own agency in directing and executing operations.

These groups have carried out hundreds of attacks on U.S. and Israeli bases since October 7 when Israel launched its offensive on Gaza following the deadly raid on Israel by Hamas. The Yemenis bring a maritime dimension to the region-wide resistance with the ongoing targeting of U.S. and other ships in the Red Sea area.

Iran has denied that it was involved in the latest attack on the U.S. base in Jordan. Tehran also denies it is behind the Yemeni operations in the Red Sea.

Iran and the resistance groups say they are an anti-imperialist alliance that is united by opposition to the U.S.-backed Zionist genocide in Gaza. These groups are not “Islamist” in the mold of Islamic State and its hardline Sunni (Wahhabi or Takfiri) offshoots. Far from it. The resistance groups were galvanized to defeat the Islamists which have been fomented and supported covertly by the United States for its regime change war in Syria. That proxy war was defeated after Russia intervened in 2015 in support of Syria.

The Americans are locked into a downward spiral created by their own flawed logic and cumulative imperialist occupation in the region.

Even President Biden has accused Iran of being responsible for the killing of the three U.S. military personnel. Biden vowed to respond at a time of “our choosing”.

So, Washington unquestioningly determines that Iran is the master culprit. That means the U.S. has committed itself to going after Tehran without any evidence or realistic understanding of where such a direction is leading. That is, how bad it could get for the Americans.

In a U.S. election year shaping up to be more fraught than ever, and with Biden facing dwindling poll numbers, the White House incumbent is highly susceptible to being goaded by Republican adversaries.

Trump has already been hammering Biden for being weak and frail. With the Middle East turning into a cauldron over the Israeli slaughter in Gaza, the Commander-in-Chief is cornered to show mettle. Biden is a hostage of stupid macho politics and bankrupt American imperialism. Diplomacy is simply not an option for the empire, according to its own logic and delusions.

After the deadly drone strike on the U.S. base in Jordan, Republican Senator Tom Cotton dialed up the revenge with the usual warmongering ranting and raving: “The only answer to these attacks must be devastating retaliation against Iran’s terrorist force… Anything less will confirm Joe Biden as a coward.”

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Biden’s inaction was the problem because it was emboldening enemies in the Middle East, saying: “The time to start taking this aggression seriously was long before more brave Americans lost their lives.”

How hilarious that Biden is scoffed at for being dovish. During his long career, he has been one of the most warmongering politicians in Washington. He backed the U.S.-led NATO wars in former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and presently in Ukraine. The only thing cowardly about Biden is that he is a craven tool of the military-industrial complex and a pathetic psychopath.

Biden is also known for his bad temper and macho knee-jerk character. We can be quite certain that the Republican taunts about his supposed pusillanimous policy in the Middle East will get his hackles up. Biden has already taken a reckless militarist position over supporting Israeli aggression. The shocking mass killing of over 26,000 Palestinian civilians under a brutal blockade of starvation has shocked the world and in particular Arab and Muslim people. And yet Biden has not paused in his “unwavering support” for Israel.

Biden has led U.S. imperialism out of the quagmire of Afghanistan into an even bigger quagmire in the Middle East. With the goading by his equally brainless political rivals, the Americans are plowing further into disaster.

With over 50 military bases strung across the Middle East in 10 countries and with over 50,000 U.S. troops stationed in the region, the Americans are sitting ducks for the resistance. The advent of drones and newer missile technology is a new realm of warfare the Americans have not adapted to with their land garrisons in remote deserts and gaudy warships.

The death of three U.S. troops has long been on the cards. The stupid American politicians think they are going to get revenge. They have no idea what is coming to them given the long history of U.S. aggression, provocation, and illegal occupation in the region. The support of Israel’s genocide, the heartrending scenes of children being torn apart by American bombs, the bombing of Yemen – the poorest Arab country – the crazed threats to Iran, the insufferable American arrogance, and decades of impunity are all now welling up in the Middle East.

The stupid American politicians are digging a hole for themselves and have no awareness of how to reverse it. Democrats, Republicans, Biden, Trump, and so on, they are all a ship of fools.

Israel’s Starvation Strategy

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By Mike Whitney

Source: The Unz Review

It’s not a coincidence that the attacks on UNRWA took place after the ICJ ruling. Israel is trying to discredit the International Court of Justice, and one way of doing that is by rubbishing UNWRA. But UNWRA has fulfilled the heroic role of providing health, education and all other services to the Palestinian refugees since 1948. And it’s really heartbreaking that Israeli propaganda is now demonizing UNWRA and leading some countries to cut off aid. So, my sympathy and support is entirely on the side of UNWRA, and I hope it can long continue to play the vital role it has always played in supporting the Palestinian victims of Israeli aggression. Avi Shlaim, Israeli historian, You Tube

UNRWA provides food and flour distribution for the entire 2.2 million population of Gaza. Defunding UNRWA will lead to mass starvation and death.

Here’s your Zionist quiz for the day: Why did Israel launch a full-blown media blitz on a United Nations relief agency (UNRWA) on the same day that the International Criminal Court of Justice (ICJ) released its historic genocide ruling?

  1. —To divert attention from the fact that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza
  2. —To inform the public that new intelligence had serviced revealing Hamas involvement in the United Nations Relief and Works Agency
  3. —To assure people everywhere that Israel’s main concern is fighting terrorism
  4. —To activate the final phase of their ethnic cleansing operation

If you answered “4” then pat yourself on the back because that is the right answer. Of course, it’s also true that Israel wanted to divert attention from the ICJ’s announcement, but that pales in comparison to the launching of the final phase of its ethnic cleansing operation. This is the real coup de grâce, the final death blow to the two-state solution and a practical remedy to Israel’s nagging demographic problem. This is also the critical puzzle piece that makes sense of the last 100-plus days of relentless bombardment, airstrikes and other forms of state terror. It’s as if Israel is boldly laying down its cards so the entire world can see the strategy it plans to employ to eradicate the native population and fulfill the Zionist dream of a Jewish state from the river to the sea.

And what might that strategy be?

To disperse 2 million Palestinians to the four corners of the earth via mass immigration.

But, how will they do that, after all, haven’t a number of countries already refused to take the Palestinians?

Indeed, they have, but that is before the (soon to-be-published) photos of starving women and children flooded social media sites around the world generating an unprecedented outpouring of sympathy for the beleaguered population. And as public sympathy leads to widespread outrage, more and more people will demand that their governments take action to relieve the suffering through mass immigration. This is how Israel intends to rid itself of its native population and create Zionist Valhalla, a Jewish majority into perpetuity.

This is why Israel has launched its ferocious attack on UNWRA, because UNWRA—more than any other humanitarian organization operating in the Middle East—helps to keep the Palestinians fed and housed which is at-odds with Israeli explicit intentions. The last thing Israel wants is for the Palestinians to establish a massive refugee camp near Rafah that will balloon in size in years to come. That phenom has already taken place in both Jordan and Lebanon where nearly 3 million Palestinians still languish in refugee camps (75 years after the creation of the Israeli state) and are still determined to return home sometime in the future. That is not what Israel wants. Israel wants the Palestinians to ‘vanish into thin air’ which is why they want them dispersed around the world so even the thought of returning home, will never enter their minds.

So, while Israeli leaders do not relish the reputational damage they are experiencing due to their treatment of the Palestinians, they are willing to endure it in order to achieve their broader strategic objectives which are the complete eradication of the Arab population and the strengthening of a permanent Jewish majority.

Israel’s overall strategy was best summarized by Daniella Weiss, a former mayor of a West Bank settlement, who said the following in a short interview on Tik Tok:

“They will move. They will move. The Arabs will move….. So, we don’t give them food, we don’t give the Arabs anything, and they will have to leave. The world will accept them.” (Middle East Eye, Tik Tok)

That’s Israel’s plan in a nutshell.

Destroy a Nation: Israel Is Deliberately Bombing Palestine’s Educational Institutions

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By Timothy Alexander Guzman

Source: Silent Crow News

It’s not about Hamas, nor the Palestinian resistance hiding its weapons or any other excuse to attack Palestinian schools and universities, it’s a plot to destroy the Palestinian people. The Israeli government is deliberately targeting all educational institutions of Palestine whether they are in the Gaza strip or in the West Bank and beyond.  So why would they do such a thing?    

If the Palestinians don’t have educational institutions to train doctors, engineers, lawyers, historians, mathematicians, religious scholars, lawyers, and every other profession that is essential for a nation to survive and thrive, then what kind of society would they have?  Trained doctors and nurses won’t be able to treat and cure their patients.  Engineers and architects won’t be able to build critical infrastructure such as buildings, roads, water and sewer systems, railways and airports.  An uneducated people won’t be able to maintain or compete with other countries in terms of finance and international trade with skilled accountants, economists, financial planners, and investment bankers.  Professors, teachers, and school administrators won’t be able to teach their students reading and writing, math, history, religion and the sciences such as biology, chemistry and physics.  Newspapers and media won’t have trained journalists, researchers, and radio broadcasters and so on.  In other words, a nation without knowledge is doomed for failure and the Israelis are well aware of it.    

Destroy the education of the Palestinians, you destroy a nation of people.  Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reported that “the Israeli army has killed 94 university professors, along with hundreds of teachers and thousands of students, as part of its genocidal war against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.” Israel has killed many professors along with their family members in the Gaza Strip, “the Israeli army has targeted academic, scientific, and intellectual figures in the Strip in deliberate and specific air raids on their homes without prior notice. Those targeted have been crushed to death beneath the rubble, along with members of their families and other displaced families.”  The number of Palestinian professors, teachers, administrators, and students killed is a sign that those involved in education is a legitimate target for the Israelis:

According to preliminary estimates, the ongoing Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of university students, reported Euro-Med Monitor. The rights group pointed out that destroying universities and killing academics and students will make it more difficult to resume university and academic life when the genocide ends, saying it may take years for studies to be resumed in an environment that has been completely destroyed.

According to the Palestinian Ministry of Education, 4,327 students have been killed and 7,819 others injured, while 231 teachers and administrators have been killed and 756 injured during the ongoing attacks. Meanwhile, 281 state-run schools and 65 UNRWA-run schools in the Gaza Strip have been completely or partially destroyed

Israel is targeting the cultural and historical properties of the Palestinian people to erase their history, but also to destroy any knowledge they have to rebuild their society:

Israel’s widespread and intentional destruction of Palestinian cultural and historical properties, including universities, schools, libraries, and archives, demonstrates its apparent policy of rendering the Gaza Strip uninhabitable, Euro-Med Monitor warned. The attacks are creating an environment devoid of basic services and necessities and may eventually force the Strip’s population to emigrate.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor stressed that the targeting of civilian objects by armed forces, particularly those that are historical or cultural artifacts protected by special laws, is not only a serious breach of international humanitarian law and a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, but falls under the purview of the crime of genocide

There is an indication that there is an agenda behind the mass killings of people involved in education.  The Toronto Star had an interesting article titled, ‘How Israel’s ‘scholasticide’ denies Palestinians their past, present and future’ said that “Academics raising concerns about this particular type of destruction call it “scholasticide,” and point to three related phenomena: the destruction of Gaza’s educational infrastructure, assaults on universities in Gaza and West Bank, as well as serious harassment and attacks on senior faculty and students supporting Palestine within the Israeli university system.” “Scholasticide’ is a term that shows how Israel’s destruction of the education system in Gaza directly impacts the past, present and future of the Palestinian people:

The destruction risks erasing Gaza’s past. For instance, the university that was blasted on Wednesday also housed a national museum containing rare artifacts. Whether those artifacts were destroyed or, as West Bank’s Birzeit University is accusing, stolen by Israel, they are lost to Palestinians. With archives and architecture destroyed, it’s as if Palestinians never lived there.

If the current situation continues, Gaza is also likely to be denied to its people in future. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated his long-standing opposition to Palestinian statehood saying Thursday, “In the future, the state of Israel has to control the entire area from the river to the sea”

According to Abdel Razzaq Takriti, an associate professor of history at Rice University in Texas who is also the chair of the Arab American Educational Foundation said that “as scholars, we cannot fathom how it is possible that we’re supposed to stay silent while our colleagues are being bombed with bombs supplied by our countries” he also said that “this is an attack on the enlightenment in society” he continued“and it’s going to cause ignorance. It’s going to cause lack of opportunity. And it’s designed to do that. Scholasticide is a very dangerous aspect of genocide.”

It’s not just in Gaza, its all of Palestine’s educational institutions that are being targeted by the IDF forces.  The Norwegian Refugee Council conducted a report from January 2018 until June 2020 and found that “Palestinian children in the West Bank contended with a deluge of attacks on education, at a crushing pace of 10 attacks per month, on average.”  The research was based on a 30-month period and it “found that 296 attacks against education by Israeli forces or settlers and settlement private security guards took place during 235 separate incidents.” 

Israel’s actions is nothing less than a diabolical plot to destroy a nation’s people.  It gives the Israelis the excuse it needs to call the Palestinians animals who don’t even know how to read or write and that the Palestinians don’t know how to make a living and that’s why they are dependent on foreign aid.  A report by Amnesty International said that “Palestinians across all areas under Israel’s control have fewer opportunities to earn a living and engage in business than Jewish Israelis” and that “They experience discriminatory limitations on access to and use of farmland, water, gas and oil amongst other natural resources, as well as restrictions on the provision of health, education and basic services.”

With no educational institutions to train and educate its people, the Palestinians will face a collapse of their society.  Zionist warmongers want nothing more but to eradicate any hope for a better future for the Palestinian people by erasing all forms of education that would allow them to advance their society and that is something that the Israelis don’t want to see happen.